Allergies & Other Things That Inflame The Nose – MASTERS OF BEAUTY

MASTERS OF BEAUTY – Episode 13 – Allergies & Other Things That Inflame The Nose

“Allergies and Other Things That Inflame The Nose.” This is the podcast that a lot of my patients have been asking for. It’s what you can do as a patient to treat allergies and inflammation of the nose and doing so with the least amount of medications possible. You know, a lot of my patients just like myself, don’t like to take medications. If you can avoid medications, sometimes you can feel better if you can do this the natural way. So we’re going to go over some tips, from using air filters to changing pillowcases, to when to wash your hair. There’s a lot of things to talk about. Inflammation in general is not a good thing. And allergies are a type of inflammation. As soon as I finished this podcast, I thought about 20 to 30 different things that we can kind of add to supplement to this.

But this is kind of a good starting point for most of our patients who are saying, “I’m dealing with allergies, and what can I do to kind of improve this?” And the reason I mentioned this is because many of my patients before surgery will have some allergies. After surgery, they’ll still have those allergies because you can’t treat allergies with surgery. An allergy is how your body reacts to something else causing an inflammation such as food or environment. And if you’re not able to breathe through your nose 20 to 30% of this could be from your septum, 20 to 30% of this could be from other structural causes. And then there could be another percentage that’s caused by the inflammation component. Everyone’s different. Here’s a helpful checklist to help you with your allergies.

ALLERGY / NASAL INFLAMMATION CHECKLIST

Non-Medication Route:

• Wash hair at night instead of morning 

• Change bed sheets often and wash in hot water 

• Keep pets out of your bedroom 

• Keep shoes at the door and don’t walk around with them inside 

• Refrain from smoking

• Try to eat clean and healthy  

• Buy organic produce

• Avoid foods high in histamines

• Check for mold in apartment or house 

• Monitor air quality 

• Change air filters monthly 

• Avoid dairy and gluten to see if your allergies respond 

• Essential oils with eucalyptus and peppermint oils to open up airways

• Buy locally sourced honey (i.e. If you live in Illinois, buy honey made in Illinois) 

• Support your liver with liver supporting foods and supplements

• Use natural non-medications (Butterbur, Phaelum, Pratense, Pycnogenol, Quercetin)

Medication Route:

• Antihistamines – Benadryl, Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra, Decongestants (may cause sleepiness)

• Nasal Steroid –

Flonase – Better of the two but is often used incorrectly. When in nose, aim towards the ears. If aimed towards septum, it can cause nose bleeds.

Afrin – Works immediately but can become less effective over time, can become addictive and can destroy the lining of the nose if used too frequently.   

• If allergies are still consistent, make an appointment with an allergist to help figure out the root of the problem.

• Bonus tip – Try humming.

So hopefully this podcast has some helpful information for you, but we barely cover the tip of the iceberg. I will definitely do a follow-up podcast to cover more.